


the gardens were blessed by the gods of me and you

by r1ker



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Internalized Homophobia, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-30
Updated: 2016-01-30
Packaged: 2018-05-17 03:37:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5852545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/r1ker/pseuds/r1ker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a case hits jack where it hurts, where it ought not to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the gardens were blessed by the gods of me and you

**Author's Note:**

> KATE AND SHANNON MADE ME DO THIS
> 
> i've never seen a lot of agent carter so i've gone off what they've let me in on and taken my creative liberty with the gays
> 
> thanks george ezra for the title btw

Peggy, despite everything in her telling her to not do this, takes on the case.

 

It's for two bodies found in a pier miles from their jurisdiction but the scenario in which two beachgoers found the corpses made this all too different. Found amongst the sand dunes and general debris associated with the tide were two men gathered together in a way that couldn't tell her anything other than the fact that they were together.

 

She doesn't go down there personally but she sends Jack and Daniel, tells them to tread gently before they set out on the drive. Jack can feel it in the way she sounds her words, _you're going to see something that could upset you_ , and in that it makes it sound like she knows something she ought not to.

 

He was none the wiser. But when he sees the two men shrouded in white sheets, still nestled in the mounds of sand not yet perturbed by the hoard of tourists due in for the three-day spring break weekend, and lifts up one corner to see their persons altogether, his stomach gives a harsh roil.

 

Their hands are close to each other's, knees huddled together, as if they were reaching for each other in their final minutes, suffering what Jack can think was all too much given the holes in their backs and sides. The night has chilled their skins to where Jack pulls his hand back like he's been burned when his gloved fingers brush a kneecap. Soon it's like the air's been forced out of his lungs, replaced with an urgency to empty his stomach of the small amount of contents it currently has, and standing back up is the hardest thing ever.

 

Near him, Daniel doesn't say anything, doesn't do anything other than get oddly quiet with his mouth set in a tense line. He looks to Jack for the answer to this, wanting his input on what could have caused this, but is rewarded nothing when the sight of the bodies stuns Jack past speaking properly.

 

"You alright?" Daniel asks like Jack would even feel up to answering any sorts of questions at the current moment in time. All that comes of that is a small shake of Jack's head and he soon concerns himself with a sheath of papers someone shoves at him to sign, and he tries to pretend like he doesn't see Daniel watching out of the corner of his eye, Jack's hand shaking around the pen his fingers struggle to grip.

 

The ride back to the office is dead silent. Jack stares listlessly out of the back window while Daniel sits next to him, a nondescript sergeant behind the wheel when it became all too obvious Jack wasn't going to be able to navigate them back with violently shaking hands. Daniel, again, keeps quiet mostly because he has no clue what to say to Jack, someone he wasn't expecting to react so intensely to a double murder, something they've seen dozens of times over and handled like all the others.

 

"They didn't look so good underneath those sheets, huh?" Daniel asks him quietly to where it's like they're the only two in the car. Jack shakes his head slowly, feeling that Daniel's tone isn't pedantic at all, if maybe a little concerned for his out-of-the-blue behavior. "They'll get them picked up and brought back to the morgue. There's no telling how long they've been out there so it might be hard to get to the bottom of it."

 

Jack's not surprised. Guys like those two, doing something they might not want to do in the time and place they've found themselves falling in love in, should have known. Should have known like he has all these years that what they've got isn't right, it's not what other people do –

 

He doesn't know he's gone off into his daydream until Daniel keeps staring at him. Just before Daniel's about to snap his fingers in front of Jack's face to keep him from going off into that trance long enough to get to the bottom of his behavior, Jack turns around to face him. He sees Daniel's face do a complete 180, look at him with unorthodox sympathy when Jack opens his mouth to speak for the first time in a few hours.

 

"They loved each other," he says matter-of-fact and Daniel looks around the back seat as if their feet against the floorboard holds the answer to that statement. Jack can feel his face burning hot, flushing with knowing that two men dared to love one another openly in a place like this, knowing that it was their affection that ultimately caused their downfall.

 

Soon he's filled with ideations of how it could have been him if he hadn't had it tamped down all these years, expertly dodging the question of who or what he was interested in when people asked him. It could be him cold and dirty on the beach, lying beneath a sheet next to the man he found himself loving just as much or almost as much as the rundown husband working alongside him in the station. With that thought he shivers, feels cold sand gathering in his elbows and neck as if it's real.

 

"Someone else didn't," Daniel mumbles just shy of sounding grimly, the all-too-real truth of the circumstances surrounding the deaths slowly coming to light through Jack's response. The rest of the trip back is carried out in that same quiet, Daniel now knowing that silence is bliss for them and not for some.

 

All seems not so much fine but tolerable following that. They get nowhere on the case, as was to be expected with how little the two bodies gave them in the evidence department. Even an identity check on the two men draws up nothing, the numbers of the people supposed to be there for them in times of emergency going unanswered after several calls and doors slammed shut in their faces when rejected phone calls turn into house calls.

 

Daniel shoves this particular file to the back of his stack, deeming it all to futile to even try different ways of solving, until one night, when he finds himself yet again burning the midnight oil. He's just about to give up and give in to the sleep pulling his eyelids down when he hears something move too sharply somewhere in the back of the station.

 

He gets up not very carefully – hours of sitting down without regular breaks has done more than enough on his leg – and walks gingerly back to confront the issue. There he finds not an intruder but Jack, sitting on the bench before his open locker, head hanging down.

 

One hand taps its knuckles against the doorframe and Jack startles as if responding to a random gunshot. He stops his mourning and turns around to face Daniel. Then Daniel can see his face, despite several shadows cast by the only light in the room being a singular flickering bulb, see what could only be self-loathing lingering behind nondescript eyes. Part of him can't believe it, can't believe the fact that Jack's still holding onto something that was weeks ago.

 

Just like that first time he asks Jack, albeit a bit more slowly this time around, "Are you alright, Jack?" Jack looks away like the question's too hard to answer, too complicated to put into sensible words. He doesn't lie anymore, shakes his head, finally confessing that there is something there that won't seem to go away no matter how hard he tries to tamp it down.

 

"I can still see them," Jack confesses so quietly Daniel has to strain his ears to even make out the words. "I can see them on the ground and I can't stop thinking that could have been me, I could have been –" He cuts himself off abruptly. Daniel can't deny that he's confused. What does Jack mean, _that could have been him_? What would have caused him to wash up on a beach with bullet holes in his back?

 

This is getting all too complicated, all too fast. And Daniel can't discern if he can solve it himself this time.

 

"What are you talking about? How could that have been you?" Daniel asks him and Jack's face splinters at the corners, eyes closing slowly in what could only be shame reserved for knowing you're different from all the others, that that makes you a target.

 

"Because I'm a queer, alright? I'm a fucking queer and that could have just as easily been me if I had forgotten to keep my fucking mouth shut and gone out with someone like they did," Jack grits out like it was against his will to do so. In a way it was, he never wanted to tell Daniel like this, let alone to tell him at all, but it was inevitable. Something like this was going to happen, he was going to let it show just how awful it was when seen through his point of view, and it was going to be said.

 

"What happened to them," Daniel tries to explain as delicately as he can with Jack amped up like this, "was someone else's doing. That doing was motivated by hate, alright?" Jack knows that, could have told anyone that would have listened to him that a dozen times over, and it still wouldn't have sunk in. He just can't believe that this happened on the cusp of his panic.

 

Jack can't see Daniel anymore, not clearly anyway, for the burn of shameful tears filling his eyes way too quickly. He doesn't blink, doesn't want to give them the satisfaction of falling. Soon it's too much and he can't help himself, lets his head fall now more in defeat than anything else.

 

"That hate was for people like me," Jack snaps, "and to know that I could be murdered on a beach and left for dead in the night with bullets in my spine for not loving a woman tends to stick with me, alright?"

 

Daniel continues to stand there, close to Jack but feeling so far away for what's been said. He takes a few steps forward, lets his calf brush against the hard wood of the bench's seat. One of his hands leaves his side, joins together with Jack's shoulder in what he hopes is an olive branch.

 

He knows it won't mean anything other than pity to Jack, but honestly, he's worried for the guy. He's always considered himself not entirely straight, knows it in his heart that he couldn't see himself being able to fully commit to a woman without acknowledging the fact that he's more often than not been attracted to men over them. Tonight can't be about his own awakening. It's about Jack, what he's clinging onto even now, and what can be done about that.

 

What can be done is lightening up the energy stinging in the air. Jack finally looks up at him with dry eyes and through his gaze pleads for contrition. Daniel accepts his silent apology, knows what motivated his words. Truth be told he'd say the same thing if it were he. He's proud of Jack for realizing this now, not that it took two men dying for him to do it, but that he finally came around to trusting Daniel of all people with something intensely private for the lives they live.

 

Daniel pulls his hand back to let Jack stand and for brief yet satisfying seconds, they face each other. That hand goes back to Jack, this time on the side of his neck, feeling the tandem beat of his pulse in his throat and the shift as he swallows. Daniel's skin prickles when his fingertips catch on the uneven grain of facial hair forgotten in the morning shave. It's warm, all too warm, and he's just getting ready to pull back and put a stop to this when Jack leans down to close the distance between them.

 

The feel of Jack's breath ghosting across his lips causes a shiver to start scaling up Daniel's spine. Soon it's degrees cooler in the room despite the furnace still blasting through bizarre late March chill. That breath turns to Jack's mouth on his and it doesn't take a lot of thought for Daniel to deepen the kiss.

 

Jack's hands don't know what to do so they settle for scrabbling at Daniel's side, skirting up his ribs through his suit jacket and shirt. It's good, so good Daniel stops hearing anything else that could possibly happen behind him. Something unseen and heard happens and Jack tugs himself back all too soon. In his absence Daniel aches, wishes he'd come back to cancel out all that could have plagued Daniel's mind with their presence long after their stay.

 

"What," Daniel breathes out with the last of the air in his lungs, finding it hard now to take more in despite being free to do so, "what is it?" Jack is blinking in that same way, looking startled out of speaking and looking for all in the world a way to get out of this room.

 

He looks just past Daniel's shoulder to the doorway behind them as if someone will show up to deal him the same fate as those two men. Thankfully he finds no one, just the steady hum and brisk rattle of the heat coming in through the vents in the floor and the walls. He looks back to Daniel, doesn't return to the kiss but gathers Daniel close to him.

 

Daniel can't believe how warm and solid someone could feel, a firm presence lacking much give in his frame, but altogether comforting. He lets his arms snake around Jack just as Jack's drape over his shoulders. If his nose presses into Jack's dress shirt, if he takes a second to breathe out into the fabric and let the warmed surface touch his face to let him know that this is Jack doing this with him, no one else would have to know.


End file.
